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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2008
Contact: Tracy Polovick
Coordinator of Communications and Outreach
(717) 787-8524
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Report Confirms High Costs for Chesapeake Upgrades, Vance Says

HARRISBURG – A Legislative Budget and Finance Committee report issued today validates municipal cost estimates to comply with the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy (CBTS), said Sen. Pat Vance (R-Cumberland/York).

The report was a result of a resolution authored by Vance that required the committee to conduct a third-party study on costs for sewage treatment facilities to execute the strategy. The Department of Environmental Protection previously projected compliance costs could be as low as $190 million, but municipalities have believed costs could exceed $1 billion. The report estimated capital costs of $1.4 billion.

"This report provides the General Assembly with an independent, realistic assessment of the financial impact of the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy," Vance said. "Now that we have a nonpartisan analysis establishing the costs for compliance, additional work must be done to help municipalities with this unfunded mandate. Two laws enacted in July will assist with some of the expense, but the available funding is only a portion of the $36.5 billion in water infrastructure needs recently estimated by the Governor's Sustainable Infrastructure Task Force."

Pennsylvania has been working with other states over the last two decades to implement programs to improve the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. In 2005 the governor unveiled Pennsylvania's bay strategy. It was designed by the Department of Environmental Protection to implement multi-state agreements intended to achieve significant reductions in the pollutants that have degraded the bay by 2010. These pollutants can come from a variety of sources: agriculture, stormwater runoff, wastewater treatment plants, septic systems, forested lands and atmospheric deposition.

Vance's district includes all of Cumberland County and Carroll, Fairview, Franklin, Monaghan, Warrington and Washington townships and Dillsburg, Franklintown and Wellsville boroughs in York County.